Billboard on I-5 in Salem, Oregon Confronts Sens. Merkley and Wyden Wasting $30 Billion on Dangerous, Unscientific “Wildfire Logging Fraud” 

This April for Earth Day, Eugene, Oregon-based Eco Advocates and Eco-Integrity Alliance have set up a billboard (photo here) on Interstate 5 inside Oregon’s capital city of Salem to pressure Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden to stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars cutting down our carbon-storing public forests under the phony guise of “wildfire fuel reduction.” Instead, the billboard urges Congress to fund Firewise home hardening programs that actually save homes from burning.

Oregon’s Congressional delegation is leading the charge to ramp up logging in our National Forests over the next ten years, siphoning $30 billion in taxpayer dollars to put tens of millions of acres on the chopping block under this fraudulent scheme that endangers our homes, lives, and climate. A House companion bill has been introduced by Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle and Colorado’s Rep. Joe Neguse.

Of course, a large and growing body of peer-reviewed scientific studies show that not only won’t logging protect communities from the natural and essential process of wildfire, tree-cutting can make flames burn hotter and spread faster by opening forests to sunlight and wind.

To the contrary, the scientific consensus is that hardening homes—Firewise measures such as installing non-flammable roofs and maintaining defensible space 15-60 feet around structures, the “home ignition zone”–can save the vast majority from the most intense wildfires.

Over a million people saw Eco-Integrity Alliance’s first two billboards in Eugene, Oregon and Denver, Colorado in 2020 and 2022. The group has already paid for a month of exposure for its newest one in Oregon’s capital city, but is looking for tax-deductible donations to keep it up through May 28—the National Day of Forest-Climate Action—along with the much-needed pressure on our elected officials to do the right thing.

“Taxpayer investments in wildfire hardening five million high risk homes across the west will avoid hundreds of billions in property losses and save many lives over decades. More logging will do neither,” says Shannon Wilson, director of Eco Advocates NW and Oregon organizer for Eco-Integrity Alliance.